August 26, 2013

The Division Coming To PC

When we first discussed the announcement of Ubisoft’s The Division on PC, the Internet was still in a bit of disarray; most of you had temper tantrums over Ubi’s use of game press.

It happens.

This news comes as no surprise since Ubisoft has been using the vocal minorities of the PC platform to gauge the demand for the Division. As the PC gamers have proven it, that demand extends well past some 300,000 registered signatures on a petition urged by Ubisoft themselves to secure the fate of a PC release. But while we’re all here standing around the bonfire, speaking on how publishers are wrenching the money from over impatient PC players-I told you so.

Having 300,000 dedicated players is no laughing matter for the PC, a platform primarily rooted in digital distribution, which eliminates the need for disc based games or instruction manuals. In fact, most PC gamer make their home in the cloud with large online game libraries in Steam and Origin. Selling a game online costs as little as a few pennies, and can profit publishers and developers much more than they usually do on console.

As the next generation systems perk up for the long gaming drought after the next gen release, Ubisoft will certainly need all of the support that they can find.

The PC is more than just a digital hub for piracy, porn, and Facebook statuses. In fact, the PC platform is often scolded by most other gamers for its full capability of running completely digitally in the cloud, eliminating the need for loading times or slow game installs. Among other benefits, such as mod support and content generation, custom built machines are a sure fire target for Ubisoft’s new craving for PC players.

Like EA and Square Enix, publishers are going to begin kissing glorious PC gamers ass pretty soon as they realize that next gen systems are far too alike with the PC to not be given an ounce of polishing and effort. Moreover, having a PC at this current point in time only gives players that many more options, especially seeing as most next gen releases are multiplatform.

But, where the next gen systems are just looking to bring an MMO to the console space, the PC will more than likely redefine what it means to have a system powerful enough to push realistic visuals like what we saw at E3. Ubisoft is promising the same amount of time and effort into their release of the third person free roam hacking game Watch Dogs, of which they also claim will be best played on PC.

Finally, we all know that this platform is still a profitable asset for game releases, no matter the level of piracy on today’s Internet. Hopefully we won’t have to worry about port issues and half assed console ports when The Division releases on PC alongside next gen systems next year!